Black Hole

Snob magazine

It is to William Makepeace Thackeray that the English language owes the colloquial use of the word “snob”—a formerly obscure term that the novelist popularized in a series of satirical essays published in Punch in the mid-nineteenth century. In them, Thackeray—who went on to write “Vanity Fair”—attempted a taxonomy of the type, ranging from the Military Snob (“With his great stupid pink face and yellow moustachios”) to Sporting Snobs (“Those happy beings in whom Nature has implanted a love of slang”) and the Dinner-giving Snob (“a man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals”). “I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with a Deep and Abiding Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob,” Thackeray wrote. “You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.”

This last observation has been taken as a motto by Snob, a Russian-language magazine that, having been launched in Russia and Europe, has just been rolled out in the United States. Snob, which is being funded by Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who recently acquired the New Jersey Nets and an interest in a big chunk of Brooklyn real estate, looks like a cross between Tatler and The New York Review of Books, printed on the kind of paper stock usually reserved for royal invitations. It features articles by Gary Shteyngart and Salman Rushdie, photography by Ellen von Unwerth and Francesco Carrozzini, and an alarming cover price of eight dollars. It is aimed at international Russians—those successful, educated cosmopolites who might live part of the time in London or New York but who, the folk at Snob like to say, think in Russian.

A launch party was held the other night to celebrate the magazine’s American début, at 200 Eleventh Avenue, the not yet completed residential tower designed by Annabelle Selldorf, in a penthouse apartment that was rumored to belong to Nicole Kidman. Perhaps twice as many guests had come as Kidman might ever be advised to invite, and as a result the party brought to mind Thackeray’s characterization of the festivities offered by the Party-giving Snob: “Good Heavens! What do people mean by going there? What is done there, that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the Black Hole considered to be an agreeable réunion, that Britons in the dog-days here seek to imitate it?” Most of the throng were not just thinking in Russian but also speaking in Russian, shouting in Russian, elbowing in Russian, snaring the last piece of truffle-grilled cheese from the waiter’s decimated tray in Russian, and trying to squeeze their way to the bar for a cocktail in Russian.

Among those present was Mikhail Prokhorov, who, being six feet eight inches tall, had the advantage of occupying a more congenial elevation. “I’m just a guest,” Prokhorov said, waving off further conversation as he stood in a corner, surrounded by diminutive satellites in suits. (The current issue of Snob features him in more voluble mode: in an eight-page Q. & A., he reveals that he does not know how to use a computer, that he is not interested in politics, and that he likes New York. “It’s perhaps the only city in the world where the energy reminds me of Moscow,” he says. “In all other major cities, I generally fall asleep.”) Prokhorov’s reputation as the playboy of the Slavic world preceded him, and while some guests were disappointed at the lack of conspicuous concupiscence—one guest muttered about the absence of caviar being eaten off naked models—there were quantities of anonymous high-cheekboned lovelies in attendance. There were various international Russians of prominence as well, including Alexander Melamid and Vitaly Komar, the artists; Keith Gessen, the novelist; Anastasia Kuznetsova, the model; and Aliona Doletskaya, the former editor of Russian Vogue. Also making an appearance was Cassandra Wilson, who had been hired on short notice to sing a few tunes, at a fee said to be thirty-one thousand dollars; she did so, valiantly if not entirely successfully countering the hubbub.

Vladimir Yakovlev, who founded the Russian newspaper Kommersant and is the editor-in-chief of Snob, said that the magazine’s name has different connotations for a person who thinks in Russian than it does for one who thinks in English. “In Russian, it is a little bit softer than it is in English,” said Yakovlev, who was wearing a slim suit and fashionable glasses. “It is not a compliment; on the other hand, it is not an insult. We think there is a little bit of snob in each of us, though most of us would not like to admit it.” Yakovlev went on to say that it was appropriate for the magazine to take its inspiration from a nineteenth-century English novelist rather than from one of the Russian greats of the era. “The entire project is about the relation between Russian and Western culture, and between an ability for people to belong to Russian culture and also to belong to Western culture,” he said. Besides, he added, “I don’t think Dostoyevsky wrote about snobs. It’s a bit more about an axe.” ♦